Latest Blog Posts

We’re finally at the end of the school year! It’s that time of year when I evaluate and consider who really needs to continue speech-language services. When possible, I try to exit students before middle school. But when IS it time to let them go?  Throughout my 20 years as an SLP, I’ve provided services covering the lifespan. One of the best (and probably most rewarding) parts of being a...

When including language sample analysis as part of a comprehensive evaluation to report language skills across settings and contexts, I always used to format my diagnostic reports with the following headings: “Observations and Parent/Teacher Report,” “Standardized Testing,” “Informal Assessments,” and of course, “Conclusions.” Usually, I included my data on language sample analysis under the “...

From toddlers with cochlear implants to adults with primary progressive aphasia (and everything in between), SALT has been part of researching people’s spoken language. Oh, and apes’ too! One of my great joys is consulting with researchers from Communication Sciences and Disorders, Psychology, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Ed Psych and more and finding out their research interests to determine how...

“The RDF tool has helped my research immensely. I can quickly generate pilot data from a dozen samples or efficiently compile data from hundreds of samples at the end of the project. The tool exports data in spreadsheets compatible with the main software tools that I use, so I never have to worry about compatibility or converting to different formats.”   John Heilmann, Ph.D.,  Univer...

ASHA has a great article on dynamic assessment which gives a clear definition of dynamic assessment:  “Dynamic assessment (DA) is a method of conducting a language assessment which seeks to identify the skills that an individual child possesses as well as their learning potential. The dynamic assessment procedure emphasizes the learning process and accounts for the amount and nature of exa...

Last month we talked about SALT and language sample analysis (LSA) for very young children. Typically, we think of language sample analysis as a tool for evaluating children. The truth is, language sample analysis should be a part of every evaluation where we are targeting expressive language skills, adults included! What is more functional for speech language rehab than being able to have a co...

Did you know that SALT is a great tool to use when assessing very young children?  Many users think of SALT as a tool for school-aged children. While SALT does offer several databases for school-aged children, language sample analysis should also be in every clinician’s toolbox when assessing the very young and preschool-aged children as well!  Taking a language sample with very young chi...

Should I include pauses in my transcript? The Awkward Pause! We’ve all been there. Maybe the awkward pause was during a casual conversation with a friend, or when you were talking to someone new at a party and ran out of interesting things to say. Pragmatically, we feel compelled to fill that pause with something! Part of learning to take great language samples is overcoming our fear of the aw...

  Background The way we talk is a window into who we are, where we came from, and how others perceive us. When I moved to the Pacific Northwest (PNW) the locals thought I had an accent. Some vocabulary words are different in the PNW. I had one student tell me about going out on his quad and I had no idea what he was talking about. In the Midwest, where I am from, a “quad” is called a “fo...

You may have noticed that some methods of language sample analysis ask you to include mazes in transcription, while others do not. SALT does ask you to include mazes. Have you ever wondered why? Perhaps you had the sneaking suspicion that, if some protocols exclude mazes, they can’t really be that important. And, after all, including them makes transcription longer and more complex, so there ha...